Brett Anderson, "Coal Black Mornings"

I was somewhat hesitant to buy this book because of its brevity -- 43 thousand words seemed lacking in the value for money department -- and its narrowed scope.  Why tell such a small and incomplete fraction of the overall story?

Fortunately, I was smart enough to take the advice of countless reviewers and online commenters.  "Coal Black Mornings" is the perfect length, it's exactly as long as it needs to be for the story that's being told.  In the preface, Anderson says that he's writing the book for his son so that he'll know who his father used to be.  It's the kind of sentiment that hits you harder when you have a son of your own, as I have recently discovered.  The language is rich and expressive, and I frequently found myself pausing to enjoy particularly flowery lines a little while longer before continuing.  In that sense, "Coal Black Mornings" is far from an easy, quick read.  Wordy snapshots of his childhood home are captured in painstaking detail, everything from his parents small neuroses to what was typically found on their breakfast table.   The minutiae don't bog down his writing at all, on the contrary, they paint everything in a more realistic, relatable light.

In a way, the book is about nothing.  The Andersons were a poor, working class family, there isn't the slightest indication of musical genius at work, no family aptitude for music, no teachers nurturing his talent because he didn't display any.  There are no fortuitous celebrity run-ins, no lucky breaks, no persistent mentors.  It's a book about a perfectly ordinary family.  The language doesn't elevate his early life into something glamorous or extraordinary in the least.  What he does, somehow, is transform the ordinary into something interesting, a type of self-analysis that we can all do, and probably should do.  He frequently notes that even the most mundane things you experience as a child can inform and influence your adult life.  He traces the genesis of specific Suede songs and lyrics back to unexpected sources such as family tragedies and his father's off-colour sense of humour.

Suede were not unjustly ignored until the press and public eventually caught up to their vision, no, Anderson repeatedly emphasizes how bad they were.  But he also stresses the importance of starting bad and finding oneself through the process of becoming good.  I had forgotten that Suede was born from completely unremarkable circumstances.   They were going nowhere until it all suddenly came together, almost materializing from the ether.  Four months before the famous "Best New Band In Britain" cover, they were playing a Xmas show to ten people.

The weakest part of the book for me was the ending, once it stops being a book about a bunch of struggling nobodies and acquires the braggadocio that frontmen of famous bands are known for.  Does this bode well for the follow-up autobiography this fall?